Shoegazer Visits: The V&A Museum, Ldn. Pt 3.

Part 3 - Misc.

Here are the rest of my photos from the V&A Museum. I appologise in advance for the terrible quality of some of them, but I only had my little point-and-click camera with me and it's hard photographing through glass with it. Anyway, I hope you enjoy them!

Pics are of: Indian wall panels. Japanese warrior dress. A Chinese wine pot. A Chinese wedding hat. Items in the V&A store. A Tudor box. An oversized metal key and lock. A mermaid ornament.

Shoegazer Visits: The V&A Museum, Ldn. Pt 2.

Part 2 - Fashion.

The fashion and costume department of the V&A wasn’t as vast as I’d remembered it... and, excuse me V&A, but where were Elton John’s glasses?! I’m an accessories kind of girl and they had stuck in my head since my last visit there years ago, but this time there didn’t seem to be any accessories except a few gloves and shoes. Pfft. Maybe I missed a section? Who knows. Anyway, what did I see that I liked? Well, the first section of the fashion zone that I came to was the Future Fashion display, where outfits by graduates from the Royal College of Art are on show. There were a lot of shoulders going on... and harsh structured lines. This outfit reminded me of Darf Vader’s mask (I’m not so hot on fashion talk... likening this to old Darf’s mask is the best I can do...)

This ensemble (below) by 2008 graduate Heikki Salonen (b.1979, Helsinki) caught my attention because it is based on The Cure’s Disintegration album cover and, well, I’m always going to be biased to anything Cure related. A small section of the cover image has been blown up and repeated. It is purposefully pixellated to reveal the digital process behind it, and the design has been printed onto silk crepe.

Another piece by Salonen that I quite liked was this sleeveless, jacket/dress with a pearl shirt underneath it which can be worn separately.

These ensembles (below) by Kate Eary put a playful twist on traditional men’s military wear with brass door locks echoing the ornamental fastenings (“frogging”) on ceremonial and military clothing.

Elsewhere, I liked this cascading dress, I didn’t catch who it was by:

This vintage YSL (I think?) embellished dress:

And this vented sports corset, I like the structure of it:

Next up: The rest of the museum!

Shoegazer Visits: The V&A Museum, Ldn. Pt 1.

Part One – Jewellery.

Last Friday I visited the V&A Museum and spent a couple of hours looking round at many of the various sections. My favourite section, the jewellery rooms, had a no photography policy which is a shame because there were so many beautiful pieces I’d love to have blogged about, but I took notes and have tried to search a few out online to share with you. First is the work of Norwegian jeweller Tone Videland. I absolutely fell in love with a chocker necklace of hers that was on display. This is the only picture of it I can find online, unfortunately the piece is spread out and not hanging as it would when worn so you can’t quite see how stunning it looked:

The piece involved layers and layers of black metal feathers with a few gold slithers providing a highlight and some delicate gunmetal chain seemingly holding the whole thing together.

Displayed alongside the necklace was this quote from Vigeland:

“The way I got the idea for the feather series came from pure luck. A friend from Bergen came to me with a set of black iron nails. I found that when I hammered them flat they had a lovely character – almost like black feathers.”

Next to catch my eye was the enormous collection of rings housed in the jewellery rooms. I think one of my favourites was a towering, crooked silver house ring by Michael Burton. Again, I’ve searched online for an image and this is the best I can find – a different house ring in bone, but you get an idea:

Elsewhere I was taken with the Art Nouveau-style jewellery on display by the likes of Rene Lalique (France 1860 – 1945) and Lucien Gaillard (France 1861 – 1933). A lot of this work features intricate metal work in the fluid, natural lines so associated with the Art Nouveau movement and finished with subtly colourful enamel. Here is an example of work by Lalique:

A rather beautiful collection of pocket watches also caught my eye and I particularly liked the unusual octagonal watches dating from 1620 – 1630. This is the best image I can find to illustrate what they were like, though this watch seems more oval:

If only the curators hadn’t been so vigilant! Anyway, I hope you’ve enjoyed this post. Next up will be a post about the rest of the museum and fashion.